Patterson snarks about transit. Hackel unsure regionalism is good for Macomb. I have a headache | Kaffer

Gov. Rick Snyder, who delivers his final State of the State address Tuesday, will always be linked to the Flint water crisis. But both supporters and detractors say he will have a broader legacy.
Paul Egan/Detroit Free Press

If you were full of hope for the future of regional transit — flush with belief, fueled by news of hopeful meetings among county leaders — allow me to disabuse you of the notion: This bus is going nowhere.

Transit is a perennial hot topic at these gatherings, made more piquant Tuesday thanks to the 2016 failure of a transit millage, and last week's news that Detroit didn't make the shortlist for Amazon's second headquarters, something for which our lack of functional regional transit deserves a portion of blame.

The Big 4 — the leaders of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, plus the mayor of Detroit — are the folks whose buy-in is required to make transit work. A conspicuous lack of enthusiasm, and corresponding lack of public support, from Patterson and Hackel helped tank the 2016 millage by a painfully thin 18,000-vote margin.

Last fall, those leaders' top deputies began meeting, working toward putting a transit millage that could win the support of all four regional leaders on the 2018 ballot.

Story was, those meetings were going well.

Ha.

Hackel says Macomb doesn't want to be a "donor county." He says he thinks his county might be better off running its own transit millage, or maybe just skip regional transit altogether in favor of driverless ride-sharing vehicles. (Coming soon to 2025!) The guy who didn't sell transit to his voters in 2016 seems just as unlikely to sell it now.

Patterson's message at Tuesday's meeting was painfully familiar to those who've followed his career. The executive said he's currently canvassing Oakland County voters to learn his constituents' thoughts about the transit plan under discussion, then spent some time denouncing a rail line from downtown to Pontiac that's been gone for decades, something literally no one is talking about reinstating.

But this is classic Patterson, on any subject that requires regional focus.

As an elected official, Patterson reasonably tries to make sure his decisions benefit the constituents he serves. His mistake is the narrow lens through which he sees.

Listen to Patterson talk, and it's clear that he still sees Oakland County as an entity unto itself, largely disconnected from the city of which it is an adjunct. The things that impact his constituents, in his view, stop at the county line.

It's a short-sighted view of this complex region, but it allows Patterson's decisions to exist in a vacuum: If it's not good for Oakland, the region can go hang.

It's an outlook that's served him well thus far. Oakland County is prosperous and well-managed. But this persistent refusal to understand that the county's success is tied to the success of this region will surely hobble the county's future — a future the 79-year-old Patterson won't have to answer for.

It's true that, by most metrics, Oakland County is doing OK.

Oakland County's millennial population is growing. Bu that doesn't mean the county is attracting new residents, Kurt Metzger, a demographer and the mayor of Pleasant Ridge wrote in an email to the Free Press; Oakland residents born in a circa-1990 baby boom are simply growing up.

In other words, southeast Michigan isn't attracting new, young residents like other regions are, and while young folks have flocked to Detroit, the region's other "sprawled employment nodes," like Troy, Auburn Hills and Novi, are less likely to attract automobile-averse millennials, Metzger said.

"In order to attract younger singles to any place outside the core, you will need to be able to provide them with a transit system (not just Uber) that allows them to be part of the full Detroit experience," he said.

So Tuesday it was left to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan to explain the urgency of the region's need for transit to compete for jobs and residents. On stage at the Detroit Economic Club, Duggan explained the realities of the existing plan to Patterson. And to Hackel, concerned about Macomb County contributing more than it uses, Duggan had to clarify that all of the millage proposals under discussion require 85% of funds to be spent in the counties they're raised in. For his part, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans talked about his own willingness to compromise.

Passing a millage would allow the area's Regional Transit Authority to bring coordination and consistency to the region's bifurcated system, adding new bus rapid transit lines, cross-county connector buses, and route rationalization across the Detroit Department of Transportation and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transit.

It's not a cure-all for the region's problems, but it would be a step forward -- not the inertia Patterson and Hackel championed Tuesday.

Folks working quietly behind the scenes on this deal tell me they believe it can still get done. I hope they’re right.

CLOSE

Six Free Press journalists used six different modes of transportation to race through downtown and midtown Detroit. Who won?
Find out Friday.
Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press